Maia Month #21 Battle Report

Maia is now 21 months old and 22.4 pounds. She likes to live dangerously by climbing on things and can get into chairs and on beds with ease. She recently learned that she can move things (like stools and elephants) to reach higher places, and goes down the slide on her own volition now.

Maia has no particular favorite foods and there is a 50-50 chance that she will consume an entire meal like a black hole or leave it all on the plate and ask for "toast" instead. Staples include yogurt, cheese sticks, all the berry-based fruits, and a neverending Costco bag of Italian meatballs.

She regularly strings together two-word phrases that are mostly intelligible like "get on, put back, close gate", so it's probably time for her to start playing text adventure games from the 1980s. A few weeks ago, I tried to spell words under pictures of animals and Maia was able to differentiate between "cat" as a picture, and the word "cat" taken out of context. She also pointed to "pets" on a playground sign without help and said "pets", but that could be a huge coincidence.

This is a very fun age, as her periodic tantrums are very predictable (doesn't want to come inside from the yard, doesn't want to take off the Christmas pajamas even though it's 11 AM) and it's fascinating to watch her make associations between things and figure out the world.